experience in things, and by the study of history. In the ages dead,
when the interests that created their legends have disappeared, we
can discover how those great popular delusions, which are one of the
greatest forces of history, are made and how they work. We may thus
fortify the spirit to withstand the cheating illusions that surround
us, coming from every part of the vast modern world, in which so
many interests dispute dominion over thoughts and will. In this sense
alone, I believe that history may teach, not the multitude, which will
never learn anything from it, but, impelled by the same passions,
will always repeat the same errors and the same foolishnesses; but
the chosen few, who, charged with directing the game of history, have
concern in knowing as well as they can its inner law. Taken in this
way, history may be a great teacher, in its every page, every line,
and the study of the legend of Antony and Cleopatra may itself even
serve to prepare the spirit of a diplomat, who must treat between
state and state the complicated economic and political affairs of
the modern world. And so, in conclusion, history and life interchange
mutual services; life teaches history, and history, life; observing
the present, we help ourselves to know the past, and from the study of
the past we can return to our present the better tempered and prepared
to observe and comprehend it. In present and in past, history can form
a kind of wisdom set apart, in a certain sense aristocratic, above
what the masses know, at least as to the universal laws that govern
the life of nations.



The Development of Gaul